"WebCred" Conference, and why it matters

One of my enduring frustrations in dealing with many people at the
Berkman Center.
is that they operate within an extremely insular bubble of enormous
privilege, protection, and power.
They just don't seem to take into account the damage the "H-bomb" (Harvard)
can do to civilians, and how people can get hurt by
their actions. Even if it wasn't malicious, even if it was just
careless, or alternately do-what-you-have-to-do, that's small comfort
to those on the receiving end of maltreatment.
(disclosure/disclaimer: See the story of the
Mike Godwin / Greplaw attacks for reasons I speak from experience here).

I've seen an amazing amount of cluelessness, including wonder that
anyone could worry about negative aspects, as well as not do backflips
that there's boy-oh-boy an IRC channel and a webcast (aren't you
super-excited right there? You can follow along with the performers,
and they might even acknowledge questions from the audience, if it's
something they find worthy, wow wow, are we interactive yet?).

Consider: This is how Zephyr Teachout starts her infamous blog post discussing the Howard Dean
campaign's arrangement with consultants who also had blogs (my
emphasis):

"[Note: this post was written in anticipation of a conference next week on ethics, blogging, and journalism]"

And over at Kos, they're wondering how the WSJ found out about this story in the first place, and they manage to trace it to my link to Zephyr and links from Instapundit and Jarvis. But they miss the first step: I read it on the Harvard conference blog.

Jerome Armstrong really got smeared by this whole thing, and he's pissed. I should have been clearer on his role in my original link to Zephyr's post, and I apologize for not doing it right.

Note, to forestall a distraction, the effect does not necessarily
require saying "This is true". Rather, it's in an implication "This is
worthwhile, this is important, this should be given your attention,
etc.". However, in context, that's very, very close to "This
is true", (though not absolutely identical) and the differences are
much smaller than the overall connection. The issue is the power to
focus attention on a statement, to give it a platform where it
will be widely echoed and heard.

After the role the Harvard conference just played in getting those activists
very widely and publicly smeared, the "little people" shouldn't have
to explain over and over why it matters. It's a testament to
the strength of the bubble that this point will not be grasped.